War Elephants

[~Isabella of Castile~]

I've noticed from experience that War Elephants are extremely effective, and that there are few ways of countering them. the only one I can think of is using a melee unit as a meat shield and having missle units behind them, attacking the elephants, does anyone have any other effective tactic against them?

[MrBosnia]

Er, spears?


In my experience, ranged units except flaming arrows do very little to hurt elephants.. The best thing to do without spears is to face the elephants and let 1 unit get the hampering while flanking with other units. Flaming arrows are the best to scare them off.

[Laman]

Phalanxes eat elephants and chariots for breakfast. Atleast if the eles come in from the front. Skirmishers with Javelins are also relatively effective against them. Other then that, firing a lot of fire arrows and hope they begin to run amok (hopefully through enemy lines) is also useful.

[Kuni]

get your onagers to hit elephants twice, or once if firing flaming boulders, and they'll rampage. I recommend this the most.

archers with flaming arrows are also a cheap way to neutralize elephants, if you have enough of them, you won't even need a sacrificial unit to TRY to pin the elephants in one place.

only the most elite phalanxes (Spartans, Pharaoh's Guard etc.) won't sustain heavy casualties from the initial elephant charge, but masses of spears will scare elephants and will fell them eventually. You'd need to get your general close to them to give them a much needed morale bonus though.

Overall, scaring elephants is the easiest way to defeat them, and all of the above do the trick. Even if javelinmen do have bonuses against elephants, I think it's a bad idea to send them against them alone, as elephants are faster and usually have missile attack capability, of which the javelinmen are vulnerable to, and that's not even taking into account the fact that javelins don't much hurt elephants.

[IceWolf]

If you can get them, elephants panic when confronted by flaming pigs. You can also pilum them to death if your forces are arranged right, but this is more costly.

[guineawolf]

i use mass calvalry,coz elephant can't make my cavalry "fly". taking down 1 by 1..

[Caliburn]

Ambushing the elephants with pila in forests is one way to cut down your infantry losses. I remember doing this with a Hastatii army against a large amount of Carthaginian elephants.

[paul_kiss]

Well, logically, spears beat elephants, but on the other hand - playing for Egypt I used elephants (mercinaries) against the Greek falanxes and those spears were flying up in the air quite pretty. And their formation was quickly broken.

Another conclusion I made is that elephants mustn't be left to work on their own. They must have some support to develope the attack.

[guineawolf]

Well, logically, spears beat elephants, but on the other hand - playing for Egypt I used elephants (mercinaries) against the Greek falanxes and those spears were flying up in the air quite pretty. And their formation was quickly broken.

Another conclusion I made is that elephants mustn't be left to work on their own. They must have some support to develope the attack.

yeah! with that way they will be invincible!

i only advice to using armored elephant,coz war elephant still vulnerable,but the armored elephant can take out phalanxes easily

[Caius]

Its the same using the armoured ones than the war ones.
You have more defence with the armoured.

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

On the strategic map, the best option with elephants, in attacking armies, is to simply retreat to your settlements, that is, if they have stone walls or above, and wait for them to come! The AI will, being as unintelligent as it is, lay siege and immediately assault. The boiling oil will burn the elephants crisp and they will run a-mock! Since your men are in the settlement, you have to make sure they are behind the walls for this to work to maximum effect, they will escape unharmed while the AI will end up with Elephants running through their ranks! The AI never kills them, so you can sit back, and watch in piece! This is really cheating - I find it rather unfair in my favour which is why I followed some advise to remove boiling oil a while back to prevent this from occurring.

[YENKO]

You are probably right, but i couldnt manage to get my elephant mercenary unit past enemy gate, so no fear from boiling oil to me on that occasion. Since then, i dont use elephants when laying siege. I made one custom siege battle once, and gave 1 unit of armored elephants to my opponent. During most of the fight i had 2 units of my Archers Auxilia fire almost all their arrows on that one unit of elephants. They did zero kills, and were badly mauled by the elephant arrows, even standing on the wall behind the parapet. With their last few arrow volleys set to fire arrows this time, they finally made the elephant unit run amok. It just started to stir about a bit, ran here and there, trampled noone and vanished in the distance, eventually. That was a shocking experience. Now i am praising my (few, sigh!) elephant mercenary units very much. They have silver armor and weapon upgrade and one golden chevron. They, together with 3 similarly upgraded Horse Archer unit are giving tough time to my newest enemy, the Julii (i am Brutii). They can shoot arrows, scare troops, trample whole cohorts...how to not be in love with them?? Not to mention the chariots. I just send my elephants after the chariots, and while they are miles away duking it out, i can kill their whole army with impunity, and proceed to corner in the chariots afterwards :)

Y.